16 Unusual Super Bowl Commercials
Super Bowl commercials have always been about pushing boundaries and grabbing attention, but some advertisers have taken that mission to truly bizarre places. From cowboys herding cats to creatures that shouldn’t exist in nature, these ads proved that when companies pay millions for 30 seconds of airtime, anything can happen.
The most memorable Super Bowl commercials often succeed not because they’re polished or conventional, but because they’re so wonderfully weird that viewers can’t look away. Here’s a list of 16 unusual Super Bowl commercials that left audiences scratching their heads, laughing out loud, or questioning what they just witnessed.
EDS Cat Herders
The 2000 EDS commercial featuring cowboys herding thousands of cats across the Montana prairie remains one of the most surreal Super Bowl ads ever created. The ad was filmed over five days in wintry conditions at Tejon Ranch, with workers battling through rain, snow, fog, sleet, and 40mph winds.
The commercial used the management metaphor ‘it’s like herding cats’ to represent the impossibility of controlling the uncontrollable, positioning EDS as the company that could solve seemingly impossible problems. President Bill Clinton even mentioned it as his favorite commercial in a national press conference.
Mountain Dew’s Puppy Monkey Baby
Perhaps the most polarizing creature ever to grace a Super Bowl commercial, the Puppy Monkey Baby made its debut in 2016 for Mountain Dew Kickstart. The bizarre creature had the head of a pug, the body of a monkey, and the legs of a baby, and was mostly a practical puppet.
The ad was designed to grab attention and create online buzz, which it certainly accomplished, becoming one of the most discussed commercials of that year despite – or perhaps because of – its deeply unsettling nature.
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Terry Tate: Office Linebacker
Reebok’s 2003 commercial introduced Terry Tate, a professional linebacker who enforced office policies with bone-crushing tackles. The character was played by Lester Speight, who actually played linebacker at Morgan State.
The ad became so popular that it spawned a whole series of Terry Tate commercials, proving that sometimes the most ridiculous concepts make the best advertising campaigns.
Budweiser Frogs
The simple concept of three frogs croaking ‘Bud,’ ‘Weis,’ and ‘Er’ in sequence became a cultural phenomenon after airing during Super Bowl XXIX in 1995. These frogs were so successful and popular that they hung around for several years.
The ad’s genius lay in its simplicity – no complex storyline, just three amphibians spelling out the brand name in a swamp setting.
FedEx Castaway Parody
FedEx created a brilliant parody of the Tom Hanks movie ‘Cast Away’ that aired during Super Bowl XXXVII in 2003. The commercial featured a FedEx employee stranded on an island after a plane crash, but with a very different ending than the Oscar-nominated film.
When rescued, the castaway reveals he survived easily because his FedEx packages contained everything he needed, including food, water, and satellite phone – a perfect product demonstration wrapped in movie satire.
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Little Caesars Flying Eyebrows
In 2025, Little Caesars created one of the year’s weirdest ads featuring Eugene Levy’s famous eyebrows literally flying off his face after eating their Crazy Puffs. The eyebrows terrorize a jogger, land briefly on a baby’s face, and draw worship from assorted caterpillars before returning to Levy’s brow.
It was absurd enough to be memorable, proving that sometimes the strangest ideas work best.
Pringles Mustache Stampede
Also from 2025, Pringles created an equally bizarre ad where blowing into an empty Pringles can causes mustaches to fly off men’s faces across the world. The ad featured facial hair flying off the lips of men including actor Nick Offerman, NFL coach Andy Reid, and NBA star James Harden.
The concept was so ridiculous it bordered on the surreal, yet it perfectly captured the whimsical nature Pringles was going for.
Coffee Mate Dancing Tongue
Coffee Mate’s 2025 Super Bowl commercial featured a dancing tongue leaping out of a person’s mouth to cavort onstage. The idea probably sounded great in brainstorming – ‘What if we had a dancing tongue leap out of a dude’s mouth?’ – but in practice it became one of those ads that’s memorable for all the wrong reasons.
Sometimes weird doesn’t equal effective.
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Tubi Cowboy Hat Head
Tubi’s 2025 commercial told the bizarre story of a man born with a head shaped like a cowboy hat. The ad chronicled the life of this unusual character who was destined to enjoy watching Westerns but struggled to fit into a world lacking in ‘fleshy cowboy hats’.
It was the kind of body horror meets advertising that only Super Bowl budgets can produce.
Seal as a Literal Seal
Mountain Dew’s 2025 ad featured pop star Seal with his face superimposed on a computer-generated seal, singing a modified version of his hit ‘Kiss From a Rose.’ His little flippers and whiskers were just unsettling enough to burn thoughts of Mountain Dew into viewers’ brains for weeks.
The ad felt like the embodiment of an idea that might have sounded good at a creative retreat but seemed particularly bizarre in the harsh light of Super Bowl Sunday.
Budweiser Crab Monarchy
One of Budweiser’s stranger efforts featured beach crabs mistaking a cooler filled with beer bottles for some sort of Crab God. The ad showed the formation of a religious crab monarchy when the crustaceans discovered the cooler.
It was the kind of surreal storytelling that made viewers question whether they were watching a commercial or an abstract art piece.
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FedEx Alien Office Worker
Another FedEx commercial featured an alien trying to blend in as an office worker. The impressive rendering of the extraterrestrial against its flimsy disguise was pretty funny, though it was hard to decipher how this sold anyone on shipping with FedEx.
Perhaps the message was that FedEx delivery was so reliable, even aliens from other planets used their services.
E*Trade Dancing Monkey
The 2000 E*Trade commercial was elegantly simple in its weirdness: just two guys and a chimpanzee in a garage, with a boom box playing ‘La Cucaracha.’ The tagline was brutally honest: ‘Well, we just wasted two million bucks.
What are you doing with your money?’ It was meta-advertising at its finest, acknowledging its own absurdity while making a point about smart financial decisions.
Lizard Backup Dancers
This particular Budweiser commercial featured CGI lizards acting as backup dancers for supermodel Naomi Campbell while dancing to Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller.’ They really threw a lot of concepts at the wall with this one, and it was memorable at the very least.
The combination of reptiles, supermodels, and classic pop music created something that defied easy categorization.
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Willie Nelson Financial Advisor Doll
This commercial was a parody of infomercials showing beleaguered people turning to an automated Willie Nelson doll for financial advice. The spot played on the infomercial trend that had been running rampant during that time period.
The idea of a country music legend dispensing financial wisdom in doll form was bizarre enough to capture attention during the commercial break chaos.
Mr. Peanut’s Death
Planters made headlines in 2020 when they decided to kill off their 104-year-old mascot, Mr. Peanut, in their Super Bowl commercial. The peanut with the top hat and cane sacrificed himself for his friends, tapping into the internet phenomena of how fictional character deaths are treated online.
It was morbid, uncomfortable, and generated massive social media buzz – exactly what Planters was hoping for.
When Weird Works Best
These unusual Super Bowl commercials prove that in the attention economy of the Big Game, being memorable often trumps being sensible. Whether they featured impossible creatures, surreal scenarios, or concepts that seemed to come from fever dreams, these ads understood a fundamental truth about Super Bowl advertising: in a sea of expensive commercials competing for attention, weird wins.
The most successful spots weren’t always the most polished or conventional – they were the ones that made viewers lean forward and say, ‘What did I just watch?’
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